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“I Am
The Way,
The Truth, and
The Life.”
Mastered by a Master.
Those scholars who are pleased to call them
selves—and possibly pleased to be called—“higher
critics,” are innocently inclined to leave the im
pression that they have a sort of corner on re
search and discovery. And too often those of ns who
belong to the “common herd,” are inclined to ad
mit their claim to scholarship while our hearts are
far from them.
And especially among the friends of unbelief;
those who have themselves only “played with peb
bles on the seashore” of real investigation, there is
a cringing tendency to be hospitable to every “new
thing” which claims discovery at the hands of those
unhappy scholars and skeptics.
It is, therefore, very refreshing to listen to a
great scholar whose achievements have won him
world-wide recognition, who plants himself with
the Christian’s faith on the Book of books, and
routs the unbelieving scholars in the house of their
own investigation. Such a man is Prof. Robert
Dick Wilson, of Princeton, filling the chair of As
syriology and Old Testament in that great insti
tution.
In his three masterly lectures during the Taberna
cle Bible Conference in Atlanta last week, he
brought an avalanche of force and faith to the thou
sands who listened to him with reverent eagerness.
His first lecture on “The Fallacies of the Crit
ics,” was designed to show from Palaography and
Philology, that the methods of the critics in deter
mining the meaning of words and the date of books
was fallacious. His second lecture was “Abraham, a
Man or a Myth?” proved that there is no insuper
able objections to be derived from the records of
the monuments to the correctness of the Biblical
account of Abraham—that is that the information
to be derived from the monuments of the period of
Ramases II and Hammurabi agreed in every partic
ular with the Bible account of Abraham with regard
to the names of persons, places and countries, and
also with regard to laws, institutions and customs.
His third lecture, “Babylon and Israel, or Did
the Hebrews Derive their Religion from the Baby
lonians?” was the most powerfully convincing of
all. The argument of the German professor to the
contrary was positively annihilated. This lecture
was an examination of the linguistic evidences of
th a relations between Babylon and Israel.
Summing up the proofs of antipathy between the
races, and showing how utterly improbable and
even impossible it would have been for the Hebrews
to build their religion from Babylon, Prof. Wilson
used these beautiful and stirring words:
“Before closing I cannot refrain from calling
the attention of this audience to that long line of
opposition between the religions, and the policy of
the Hebrews and Babylonians, which extends from
the time when Abraham was called out from Ur of
the Chaldees, to leave his country and his kindred,
until in the Apocalypse and the later Jewish lit
erature Babylon became the height and front of
the offending nations against the kingdom of the
'God of Israel. All through that extended and ex
tensive literature, of the ancient Hebrew, all through
those long annals of the Assyrians and the Baby
lonians, wherever the Hebrews and the Assyrio-
Babylonians were brought into contact, it was by
way of opposition. The only exceptions were in the
cases of some weakling, Jehovah-distrusting kings.
The light of The World
The Golden Age for March 29, 1906.
But these exceptions, prophets and kings and poets
emphasize and reiterate the antagonism, essential
and eternal, existing between the worship of Jeho
vah, and the worship of the idols of Babylon. And
when the children of' Israel had been carried away
to the rich plain of Babylon, so beautiful, so vast,
was it a Greek patriot to the Athens of his dreams,
or a Scotsman to his “ain countrie?” Not thus.
But they wept when “they remembered Zion.”
“How shall we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange
land?” Not thus does the Catholic pilgrim sing
when he treads the streets of papal Rome and
stands in awe beneath the dome of St. Peter’s. Not
thus does the Arab Hadji pray when he bows with
in the sacred precincts of the Kaaba. But thus has
every Jew throughout the ages, the record of whose
thoughts and feelings has been preserved to us; and
thus does every child of Abraham, according to
the promise, feel that not to Babylon, the golden
city, the mother of science and arts and commerce
and of idolatry and harlotries and sorceries, do we
look for the springs of our religion and the hope
of our salvation, but to “Jerusalem, the golden,”
the city of the Great King.”
A Worker Till the Last.
A beautiful memorial tribute from a dutiful son
to an honored father, has been issued from the
Cumberland press by Rev. George Hyman, of Arabi,
Georgia.
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REV. J. J. HYMAN.
The publication of this little volume of one hun
dred and fourteen pages, brings afresh to those who
loved him, the useful life and recent death of one
of the most remarkable men in Georgia. A teacher
for twenty years; a preacher for forty-eight years;
moderator of the Houston Assocition for fourteen
years; president of the 'South Georgia Baptist Con
vention four years; a trustee of Monroe College
five years; a trustee of Houston High School ten
years, J. J. Hyman was one of the trusted leaders
of his denomination, and a great blessing to the
cause of Christ. He was a brave Confederate sol
dier and a chaplain in Lee’s army, preaching the
thunders of Sinai and the pleadings of Calvary
amid the shock of battle and the horrors of war.
During his long and fruitful ministry he baptized
over two thousand people. As founder of the Hous
ton High School at Arabi, Ga., in 1895, he did a
work for Christian education which cannot be over
valued.
One of the most remarkable things about this
patriarch of God was the vigor with which he work
ed in his old age. At the time when most men are
superannuated because they are getting old, John
J. Hyman, girding up his loins, and concentrating
his energies around the venerable mile-post of his
three score years and ten, preached his full time,
blessing and leading forward every community
where his stalwart personality touched the lives of
men.
He Would Not be Laid on the Shelf.
The writer remembers a visit to Arabi some years
ago. This busy old man was packing up some of
his splendid library to move over to Abbeville
where he was pastor for half his time. “Why are
you moving your books to Abbeville, Brother Hy
man?” was asked. And J. J. Hyman, gruff and
gray, looked at his questioner, and said in his vig
orous style. “See here; do you think I am going
to let all these young fellows get ahead of me? Do
you reckon I am going to be laid on the shelf?
I must study to keep up, and if I spend half of my
time in Abbeville, I must use part of it for study.
I tell you, young man, I don’t propose to be laid
on the shelf.”
And this rugged purpose, wrapped in a spirit of
deep consecration to God, made the grand old man
“the Nestor of the South Georgia pulpit,” pre
served to power in old age because a student and
a worker till the last.
Hope, Faith and Love.
There are three lessons I would write—
Three words, as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men.
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Have Hope! Though clouds environ round,
Ami gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put off the shadow from thy brow—
No night but hath its morn.
Have Faith! Where’er thy bark is driven—-
The calm’s disport, the tempest’s mirth—
Know this: God rules the hosts of Heaven,
The inhabitants of earth.
Have Love! Not love alone for one;
But man, as man, thy brother call;
And scatter, like the circling sun,
Thy charities on all!
Thus grave these lessons on thy soul—
Hope, F |ith and Love—and thou shalt find
Strength when life’s surges rudest roll,
Light, when thou else wert blind.
—Schiller.
Doing one’s duty may not always be pleasant
but it leaves a sweet consciousness, and the perfect
“peace that passeth understanding.”
—Margaret Smith Graham.
“The Entrance
of
Thy Woras
Giveth Light.”
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